Signs of the Times: Astrological Ages

Age of Cancer: 8640 to 6480 BC
Cancer rules: Food, Agriculture, Houses and house building, Community, Motherhood, and Family.

This age hosted the Neolithic Revolution and the invention of agriculture around the world. The traditional dates for the Neolithic Revolution are 9000 to 6000 BC, a rather exact fit for the Age of Cancer.

The traditional area for this new activity was the Near East. This was part of a matrix that included Eastern and Mediterranean Europe, and the Nile river valley. Another agricultural matrix began as early as 9000 BC in Southeast Asia, up into central China. New Guinea and the Rajasthan desert area of India was also a part of this matrix. And in the New World agriculture was being invented from the Yucatan in Mexico and Central America down the west coast of South America through Peru.

Houses were built and people settled into permanent year around communities, giving up the roving life of the hunter-gatherer. Scores of communities were settled throughout the Near East, leaving us ample record of their lives in the dry air of the deserts of the Middle East. There is little record of community living in the wetter climates of Southeast Asia or Central America, where building materials likely had rotted away thousands of years ago.

The Age of Gemini opened up new vistas for exploration and interaction across large distances. Across the Near East we see an explosion of crafts industries with huge stone and bone industries creating a wide variety of articles, a statue industry and a bread industry. Gemini Age man began using his mind and his hands to create a more interesting life for himself.

The ceramics industry is the most remarkable of these industries in part because of the decorations used. Although ceramics were created before this age, it was right at 6500 BC that they exploded both in excellence of craftsmanship, and in the sheer numbers of vessels created. Almost immediately, everywhere, they were created with abstract decorations on them that led, over time, to beautiful polychrome glazes with a wide variety of abstract symbols for decoration. Ceramics also appeared in Europe, the artic fringe of Eurasia, in China and the Malay Peninsula.

These symbols, such as crosses and swastikas carried a new Gemini religious symbolism with them. Art during the Age of Cancer was representational. As we enter the Age of Gemini abstract symbolism quickly replaced representational art as the predominant form of art. Abstract imagery carried much more meaning and information for the Gemini mind.

Essentially all of our modern language families were created here. Experts agree that the proto-Indo-European language was begun around 5000 BC. This is the parent language of almost all of the languages spoken today. Other experts indicate that a parent to the Chinese language was created around 4800 BC in China.

The Gemini individual began to explore beyond the boundaries of the local village, and over the course of the age a huge trading network was created by 5000 BC that extended from the Mediterranean Basin through the Near East and up into southern Russia. In Gemini fashion the main commodity traded was information and knowledge. A similar trade network was created in the Archaic Culture in North America that extended out from the New England area west to the Yellowstone and south to the Caribbean.

Sometime after 4800 BC, the U’baid people in Mesopotamia moved out onto the harsh, resource poor river plains of the Tigris and Euphrates Rivers. There they invented money as a means of trade, and invented banks and banking to support the use of money. Their trading villages were remade into market towns. Their banks soon began to float loans and collect interest. Bartering gave way to the development of a money economy, along with business and banking, and the use of copper as a universal medium of exchange, the first known coinage. Money was deposited into these early U'baid banks to be applied, much as we do today, towards projects of civic improvement, which would in turn make more money. By 3500 BC these new U’baid towns were rich with imported goods. A whole new basis for community living was created. Indeed the sole archaeological indicator for growth during this age was the incremental increases in wealth found at these and other sites around the world.

The religions of this age were bound to the ideal of money and wealth. The gods showed their favor in a very Taurus way by showering wealth and goods on those who worshipped them. The temples became the center for the collection and redistribution of wealth, and priests were the administrators of this activity. The earliest examples of writing were temple business accounts listing what was coming into the temple warehouses, and what was being given out. Although writing is traditionally a Gemini quality, we can see here that Taurus was solidifying Gemini thought, in a very practical Taurus way, into a permanent Taurus business record.

Taurus spiritual thought revolved around the ideal of creating heaven here on earth by building cities in a hierarchal fashion to mimic the perceived structure of heaven. Towns were built with their walls facing the four directions. Temples were built as the center of town. Over the course of centuries they were constantly being rebuilt over the old foundation. Eventually these temples grew into huge mountainous pyramid structures called ziggurats in Mesopotamia that could be seen from miles away. The Egyptian pyramids were built at this same time. New finds in Peru have found huge pyramids being built there at this same time. In this same process towns grew to become cities.

Cultures began to organize themselves along hierarchical lines as well, creating class structure. India’s caste system began at this time. Most calendars give starting dates around 3000 BC as they began to organize time and the year around the equinox and solstice dates. Holy days were set so that a natural cycle of rituals marked the passage of time. In this way time was honored as hierarchical and sacred.

The Scorpio opposite energy can clearly be seen here as well. Scorpio rules death and rebirth. The Pharaohs of Egypt and the ruling Ens of the various city-states in Mesopotamia were buried in huge monumental tombs. With them they took much of their wealth and usually all of their servants so that they would be comfortable, in Taurus fashion, in the afterlife. Similar burial practices were found in the Archaic Culture in North America dating to this same period.

Age of Aries: 2160 to 0 BC
Aries rules: War and fighting, Challenge, Individuality, Independence.

Aries marks an important shift in world consciousness. The older matriarchal ideal of Taurus monumental solidarity, where everyone had his or her defined place in society, was the antithesis of the incoming Arian ideal of individualism. Around 2500 BC mythologists note a world wide mythic solarization happening where the new young hero god rises up and defeats the older Goddess, thus inaugurating a new order in heaven. Patriarchal paradigms replaced matriarchal paradigms everywhere, and men took over the running of society. Hero mythologies were created honoring these new gods and the masculine warrior ideal.

Aries brought with it war on a huge scale. This age was one of continual fighting. Empires were created. Sargon of Akkad created the first known military empire around 2300 BC. Following him, conquest became the norm, with a long list of empires being created through conquest, and then being conquered by another, until the rise of Rome in the first century BC. The ancient Greeks came to epitomize this energy and their Olympic religion glorified the warrior mentality. Gods and goddesses fought with each other. They chose sides in human wars so that they could take part in the glorious human battles being fought.

The Biblical Old Testament is an Aries tale. It was first written down around the 7th century BC, well into the Age of Aries. Although God is said to be a loving god, references to the older Taurus age mentality, he is portrayed in the written account as stern, jealous, and vindictive. In Aries fashion he is fighting for his own ascendancy over rival gods. He is pictured as a general leading his army of “Chosen People” in conquest of the “Promised Land” of Canaan. Those who do not follow his commands or commandments are punished or threatened with punishment for insubordination. He is often portrayed as smiting the enemies of his chosen.

In China, the militaristic Shang Dynasty overran the peaceful Lung Shan culture around 1850 BC inaugurating a long history of warfare. They were in turn overrun by the more powerful Chou Dynasty in 1122 BC. Recent finds in Peru have unearthed a city called Casma dating to 1500 BC. The pyramid temples have images of war and fighting carved into their walls.

Age of Pisces: 0 BC to 2160
Pisces rules: Transcendence, Spirituality, Contact with Other Worlds, Fear, Prophets and Prophecy, Dissolution, Dreams, Illusion, and Lack of Direction.

The Age of Pisces has been an age of great world religions, starting as early as 700 BC. The eras of an age mark a transition point where new energies are felt that lead to new directions that will welcome in the new age. This happens about 700 years before the new age begins. We notice that around 700 BC the Prophetic Revolution began the process of changing a local Semitic religion into the great world religion of the Hebrews. Around 500 BC Lao Tzu introduced Taoism to China. The Buddha was doing the same thing in India. Hinduism was also undergoing a Pisces shift. The warrior gods such as Agni were demoted while Brahma, Vishnu and Shiva were all elevated in importance as gods of a new transcendent reality beyond the mortal relative world. These were all religions of transcendence.

Judaism led to Christianity and Buddhism spread to encompass most of the Orient. These religions spread beyond national boundaries to become the first multinational organizations in history. National governments became theocracies, the secular arm of society working at the behest of the spiritual paradigm they represented. Europe was the Holy Roman Empire, a Christian empire following Christian precepts. Islam was created at the outset to also be a religious Moslem governing body. The same was true for Tibet. It was a spiritual nation.

War was turned inward in this age. The enemy was no longer just an external force or challenge. It was internal, and there was seen to be a great battle between good and evil, God and Satan that was constantly tearing at our souls.

The Church battled amongst itself while trying to create a set dogma for correct belief. The Inquisition was established to weed out incorrect thought and belief. Women were persecuted, tortured, and burned for the irrational belief that they were pagan and associates of Satan. Pisces fear rose to great heights to overshadow the compassionate and loving message of Christ. As a sad result Christianity ended up becoming the most violent institution in history.

In the Orient fear was focused in a different but equally Piscean direction. The great Satan was replaced by the idea that this earthly existence, the Wheel of Life, was a prison, and that we must transcend or escape to a higher heavenly awareness in order to be happy and free. Pisces rules imprisonment and escapism.

The great wars of this age were religious wars. The Crusades were fought to wrest the Holy Land from the Moslems creating a basic militaristic division between Moslem and Christian that still affects us today.

Although we are not in the Age of Aquarius yet, we can see what is happening historically as we close in on that age. 700 years prior to Aquarius takes us back to the fifteenth century. This was the time of our Renaissance. Science rose up to rival religion as the new Aquarian paradigm. Along with this was a new focus on humanism and the human potential.

In addition, the Aquarius Era was from 1800 to 1980. This era saw the Industrial Revolution and the revolutionary advances of the Twentieth Century. Science and technology have revolutionized our world.